Wigan author re-lives pain of past for book about childhood

Andrew Nowell

A local author has begun committing his extraordinary life to paper with a hard-hitting account of his tough upbringing.

Jack Marriot, from Standish, has penned Parental Damage based on the troubles he suffered at the hands of his stepmother, how he ended up in borstal and how he found his way out of the darkest places thanks to boxing.

The heavily-autobiographical book is the first of three volumes Jack is planning, with further accounts of his adult life in the pipeline.

However, he will also have to draw a veil over some of his adventures as he worked for year as a high-level bodyguard, a career which means he also retains some secrecy around his identity and writes under a pen name.

Jack said he needed some convincing both to put pen to paper and then to get Parental Damage published and admitted going through much of his childhood again was an often-painful process.

Jack, 55, said: “This was something I didn’t think I would do, but as I got older realised I had to do.

“I had things to put to rest and writing the book has helped me.

“I just started writing it one day. I had to relive a lot of experiences and it was very hard, my wife said at one point I should stop as it was killing me.

“When I got to the end it was a big release. I put it to one side for about 10 years.

“It turned up again and people said I should do something with it and luckily enough I found a publisher.

“I was quite a disruptive kid at school and that was based on the things going on in my home life. To be truthful a lot of people washed their hands of me.

“I’ve always been writing but it has to be something that means something to me.

“I don’t really do fiction, it’s not really my thing. It has to be something I have experience of and know about.”